ROY KEANE reckons besieged manager Louis Van Gaal should be give two years.

Curiously, this is precisely the term given to an amateur manager of my acquaintance. However, it was the judiciary rather than a board who handed out the judgment to Big Tommy.

His case was not decided on the basis of his tactical prowess. Big Louis has come up with a cunning plan to make Manchester United very beatable at Old Trafford. The Jags under Big Tommy were unbeatable, certainly in a cage match.

Big Louis' problem is that he cannot seem to inspire his players. Big Tommy's powers of motivation were so legendary Tolkien wrote a book about them. His demise came when he had a robust disagreement with Big Jimmy in the middle of a match.

Big Jimmy made four mistakes:

1, He failed to run the channels

2, He argued with Big Tommy

3, He argued with Big Tommy near the corner flag

4, He argued with Big Tommy near the corner flag and told him where he could stick "his channels"

A specialist police diving team later retrieved the corner flag but Big Jimmy thereafter played at a running crouch. Big Tommy returned to lead the Jags to continued glories and, strangely, a succession of centre forwards ran the channels as if they were sprinting towards heaven itself.

Motivation, then, was not a problem for the Jags and neither was strategy. One entered Beechwood Park as if one was stepping ashore at Omaha beach. There was no return. There was also a gameplan. Teams knew their strengths and played to them. As the game unravelled in scenes reminiscent of a kitten playing with a ball of wool, the team adapted.

It all seems so different in the Biggest League in the World. The Endlessly Promoted League has always been a bit silly. Remember the hype about the Golden Generation? Those greats of Gerrard, Lampard and Ferdinand won so much in a national shirt they could have been turning out for Scotland.

Now we have the hype about how the gazillion trillion league, partially funded by this nation's licence fee payers, is more fun that eating hot chocolate fudge cake while bopping with Kylie. It is entertaining in a sort of odd way, with the spectacular refereeing errors, the roaring crowds and the insistence that everyone is watching "top, top players" when they are witnessing Peter Crouch of Stoke jousting with Jason Shackell of Burnley.

But it is obviously absurd and this is exposed on contact with reality, most conspicuously the Champions League. The EPL has trillions but only three clubs have won the Champions League in its present form, despite 36 of them being allowed to play in it every year.

Their managers have come up as short as Ronnie Corbett at Becher's Brook. Fergie has won it twice, Mourinho has won it twice, but not with English clubs, and Rafa Benitez won it with Liverpool, with the sort of miracle that suggests he is a shoo-in for beatification when the Pope gets round to it.

The under-performance of English clubs in this season's cup owes something to managerial incompetence. Wenger buys so many small players one believes he is assembling a cast of Munchkins for a Palladium revival of the Wizard of Oz. Manuel Pellegrini has dosh and a large squad at Manchester City but no discernible, communal strategy and certainly players who either won't listen or are listening to the wrong thing.

Brendan Rodgers can be summarised with the observation that he brought in Mario Balotelli to replace Luis Suarez. This is akin to bringing in the aforementioned Mr Corbett to replace Mike Tyson in a heavyweight bout.

Mourinho can be forgiven. Chelsea 2015 are over-rated but their manager is not. Listening to the radio on Wednesday night after Chelsea went out to PSG, I was amused to hear one observer say that Mourinho cannot set up a team properly. Yeah, and Michelangelo is no good at ceilings. I had not laughed so loudly, so ironically since I looked at my wage slip.

The managerial incompetence, too, does not become obvious merely in Europe. Big Louis decided that Manchester United should channel their inner Wimbledon of the 1980s to confound Arsenal.

But the major problem lies with the players in England. Some of them are not good enough. More worryingly, some of their players believe they are very good and they patently are not.

Undoubtedly, this impacts on any chance they may have had in winning this year's Champions League. Mourinho hinted at the lack of mental strength and dedication when his team were papped out by 10-men PSG. This is a manager who has taken the relative underdogs of Inter Milan and Porto to Champions League titles but cannot do the same for a Chelsea side that has resources that make a custom-built stadium on Mars with free transfer for fans by space shuttle a possibility if Stamford Bridge proves unfit for purpose.

The truth is that for all the hype, for all the talent and for all the money, English football is not properly flying the national flag. Big Tommy would have known what to do with all that, including where to put the flag.